The Insecure American

by Gusterson, Hugh

• ISBN13: 9780520259713
• ISBN10: 0520259718
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-11-24
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Americans are feeling insecure. They are retreating to gated communities in record numbers, fearing for their jobs and their 401(k)s, nervous about their health insurance and their debt levels, worrying about terrorist attacks and immigrants. In this innovative volume, editors Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman gather essays from nineteen leading ethnographers to create a unique portrait of an anxious country and to furnish valuable insights into the nation's possible future. With an incisive foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich, the contributors draw on their deep knowledge of different facets of American life to map the impact of the new economy, the "war on terror," the "war on drugs," racial resentments, a fraying safety net, undocumented immigration, a health care system in crisis, and much more. In laying out a range of views on the forces that unsettle us,The Insecure Americandemonstrates the singular power of an anthropological perspective for grasping the impact of corporate profit on democratic life, charting the links between policy and vulnerability, and envisioning alternatives to life as an insecure American.

Author Biography

Hugh Gusterson is Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University. He is the author of Nuclear Rites and coeditor (with Besteman) of why America's Top Pundits Are Wrong, both from UC Press. Catherine Besteman is Professor of Anthropology at Colby College and the author of Transforming Cape Town (UC press).

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Acknowlegmetn
Introduction	p. 1
Fortress America
A Nation of Gated Communities	p. 27
Warmaking as the American Way of Life	p. 45
Republic of Fear: The Rise of Punitive Governance in America	p. 63
The New Economy
Neoliberalism, or The Bureaucratization of the World	p. 79
The Age of Wal-Mart	p. 97
Deindustrializing Chicago: A Daughter's Story	p. 113
Racism, Risk, and the New Color of Dirty Jobs	p. 140
Insecurity as a Profit Center
Normal Insecurities, Healthy Insecurities	p. 163
Cultivating Insecurity: How Marketers Are Commercializing Childhood	p. 182
The Most Vulnerable
Uneasy Street	p. 207
Body and Soul: Profits from Poverty	p. 224
Useless Suffering: The War on Homeless Drug Addicts	p. 238
Walling Out Immigrants	p. 255
Insecurity and Terror
Compounding Insecurity: What the Neocon Core Reveals about America Today	p. 273
Deploying Law as a Weapon in America's War on Terror	p. 292
Insecurities of Body and Spirit
Death and Dying in Anxious America	p. 317
Get Religion	p. 345
List of Contributors	p. 362
Index	p. 367
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